How Kristina Robbins of Sweet Antelope Storytelling Supper Club Started a New Life After 50 by Creating Community for Others.
Kristina Robbins asked herself “who am I when I don’t have to do anything?” and the answer
was someone who turns dinner parties into an art form. At 55, after raising children and caregiving for an ailing parent, Kristina felt it was her turn to do what she had always wanted. She created Sweet Antelope, a dinner party experience with storytelling in Los Angeles.
The parties take place in what feels like the ultimate family home. You enter and you know there is love comfort in this space. The meals are prepared with fresh produce from the backyard and the centerpiece of the evening is the story telling performance. It’s a night of connecting to other humans in a world where devices eat up even the small talk.
You know you’ve arrived at the right place because you are met on the front porch and are handed a piece of hand stamped balsa wood with your name written on it in cursive. You’ll take that offering to the backyard farm where you’ll be served a cocktail and appetizers. There’s a firepit where you’ll drop that piece of balsa wood but only after you’ve set an intention. The ashes from the fire will be fed into the compost and that’ll be used in the farm creating a full cycle.
Cocktails are followed by a storytelling performance on the back porch by a professional storyteller, usually a Moth Grand slam winner or stand-up comedian. After that the guests are then seated at tables that hold story telling prompts on the theme of the night. Past themes have included “Smells like Teen Spirit” and “Love Hurts”
Through these prompts you’ll be catapulted past small talk and into real conversations. As Kristina tells it: “You sit down and don’t know anyone, except maybe the person next to you. And we all make judgements about people and who we think they are and then they tell us a story that we didn’t see that coming. People are surprised by other people and feel an emotional connection to someone they barely know, which most people find refreshing, especially in a world where we all think humanity’s a dumpster fire, and, by the end of the night this table has coalesced over a single conversation about something that’s more meaningful to all of them and feels like they’ve bonded and it’s the antidote to what we’re experiencing in the world today” .
Kristina has always chosen a path that left room for her to be with people and have strong relationships. Because of this some of her friendships have lasted 40 years. She feels the voice beneath these choices was “I just want to be as free as humanly possible.” While raising her kids she ran a company that made shorts films for non-profits and causes, something she could do at home and in her own time and be the parent she wanted to be. Even then, she still realized she’d still have to work at carving out the freedom she wanted. She found it in the form of cooking and gardening. Kristina explains it, “In some ways the joy that I got out of cooking and gardening was a way for me to find freedom within the constraints. It was something…an expression that was very personal to me and it was related to nurturing for me.”
The hard-core feminist in her wrestled a bit with this new barefoot in the kitchen version, but she feels Sweet Antelope has been the most authentic expression of herself yet. One of the unexpected joys of starting it was the love she got back from her friends and community, which inspired her even more.
Kristina has created a life where she where she can protect her own mental health.
She considers the three hours she gardens every morning a form of meditation and by involving her husband and two children, she feels their support as well. Her true gift is creating community and bringing together strangers in a city where it can be hard to connect to others. Good food, ambiance and conversation are primal ways of bonding, leaving her guests feeling a little less alone and a little more in touch with a kinder world.
@sweetantelope
